Halo Universe has posted a preview of Halo 2 – in German. If you read German… go visit!

Yesterday, Warbow resurrected the Calvin and Halo strip to take a shot at Stuntmutt. (Stuntmutt returned fire, by the way.) Today, we have the first and last Calvin and Halo guest strip for you – Warbow’s decided to let this one through, but it ain’t gonna happen again. Enjoy it!

Gutupio has posted a NEW puzzle on our forum; it’s self-enclosed. (That is, the puzzle is the post itself.) Prize is a Grunt Plushy (if enough people have signed the petition to convince Microsoft to market them – currently, there are 1752 signatures, can we break 2000?), or street cred if they don’t get made. Warning – it’s non-trivial.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from Mr. Chubigans, and looks at a side of the Master Chief we haven’t seen much of. (Thank Goodness.)

A Halo review on Game Chronicles today… 8.8/10, with downgrades for the ‘staggering system requirements’. Not a bad read. Thanks, Blue’s News (via Ash).

We got word from mrsmiley that Halo Babies is offline until the 22nd; they went through too much bandwidth, too fast. He did want to assure everyone that they’ll be moving soon, and the bandwidth problems will go away!

Okay, so this one’s WEIRD. Late last week, we got mail from Billy Oliva, talking about a bizarre glitch in Truth and Reconciliation (the third campaign level). Right after entering the ship, he came across a stack (literally) of covenant, piled up against a door, waiting to attack. he sent screenshots… but they were small, and not great, quality-wise. I held off, because I wanted to see if I could reproduce this. 24 hours later, we received ANOTHER mail, this time from AfroRyan, claiming to have found the same thing, in the same place. I was really suspicious, because not only did he send similar pictures, but they were the same (non-standard) size, and with the same filenames as those sent by Billy. (Afro, I apologize for not believing you. 🙂 ) Then, 24 hours later, Ben Roth posted pictures he found on the Gearbox forums, showing THE SAME THING. Both Billy and AfroRyan sent in saved games… but it took me until today to find time to reinstall 1.03 (1.031 hosed saved games, so I couldn’t use them). I made films from both saves – but the one you’ll see came from AfroRyan’s save, because he had TWO piles of baddies, not just one. I took much more footage than can be seen in this film… but most of it is useless; if you get too close to the piles, framerates drop into the low single digits, you can’t tell you’ve thrown grenades until they explode (usually ON you), and there’s no way to manouver. The save I was given was on Easy – you’ll see why that’s a GOOD thing after you watch the movie. Here’s the movie; 45 seconds worth, enough to show you some out-there piles o’ baddies. It’s QuickTime format, 640×480 (so you have a good view), and weighs in at just over 10 mb. You can also grab AfroRyan’s profile (with the savepoint inside) – 2.1 mb – if you want to play with it yourself. (You MUST work with HPC 1.03, not 1.031, to use this. Drop the unzipped folder into your savegames folder, and you’re set to go.) Thanks to both these guys – Billy was first with the notice, but again, his bucket-o-covies was smaller, so I didn’t use it. I’m guessing something was accidentally changed during the 1.03 patch development process… because I saw no reports of ANYTHING like this before now.

XLNC once again rocks the Casbah with some spectacular screenshots; he got somewhat creative with the hacking, and the end results are simply stunning. Check ’em out. (Who needs dev tools, anyway?)

I missed this last week… but Narcogen, over at Rampancy.net, has written the first of a multipart series about the Halo community. Coming as it does from a longtime Bungie fan and community leader, it’s an interesting read; newer fans might find it interesting to see where the ‘old guard’ is coming from. I’m looking foward to the next part!

Sippan (who posts as Vid Boi on our forum) wrote to tell us of a review of Mac Halo (in Swedish) at the Swedish news site MacNytt.se. 9/10, for those who don’t read Swedish.

rapture created a series of Christmas ornaments using One One Se7en characters a couple of weeks ago. It took a little while to get around to ’em… but then, my Christmas lights and tree aren’t up at my home, either. You’ll find them prominently linked in the the One One Se7en section until Christmas; pick the ones you want and print ’em out, hang ’em on your own tree!

Whoa. After exactly 8 months of inactivity, Calvin and Halo comes alive again with a new strip. Thanks, Warbow!

Astounding as it may seem, Stuntmutt’s One One Se7en comic has made it to 100. That is – not including Sunday strips, Holiday strips, Archive strips, or Guest strips, there have now been 100 strips presented to you, the public, since April of this year. Wonga. To celebrate, MC gets a cake. (Be sure your computer’s not muted.)

Last Fan Fiction update was 48 hours ago – here are another 21 pieces. (Yes, that’s an absurd submission rate. And yes, that’s after deleting more than one entry.)

• Spartans, by Sergeant B
• A Path to Nowhere, by Mainevent
• First Strike, by CovieKilla
• The Last Battle: The Yaxans, by JOTD FanFiction Team
• The Trials of a Displaced Master, Chief Chapter II: Time Travel Can Be Such A Pain, by stan
• Battle for Tectron: Chapter 2-A Helljumper’s story part 2, by Helljumper
• Once In A Lifetime Offer -MC Rap-, by AmokTheClown
• Life Workin for HBO,Part Three, by Hunter_Killer
• Inside the Blood Faction (TFW prologue), by Awacar
• His Last Mission(Continued…), by FF Echo
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Four, by Agent Shade
• Out of Phase 3, by BlackValkyire
• Legion of Honor – part 2: Essence of Camaraderie /Chapter 1, by Brocktree
• Fight for New Tatley (Chapter 8: Requiring Assistance), by CoLd BlooDed
• Only One Soldier, by CoLd BlooDed
• ONI Black Operations Part 4, by Jaywhit10
• Task Force 168: The Silent Justice-Chapter Two, by Blue Jaguar
• Long Time Gone Part 8 plz read, by grylsy
• Life Workin’ for HBO, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• Halo2: The Covenant Wars, by Thomas Harper
• Galaxy 07 – Part six – Discovery, by Jillybean

Gettin’ on in the day… but it’s still Wednesday, so there’s still time for Halo: Resolution. Looks like those grunts might be going a bit too far…

Feedback on Mac Halo’s gameplay: from the Maccommunity forum, there’s a report (thanks, Gary Smith) of good gameplay on a 900 MHz G3 iBook with a 32 mb Radeon 7500 (below the recommended minimum standards set by MacPlay), and from our own forum, a report of lousy play on a dual 2GHz G5 with a 128 mb Radeon 9800. Hmm…

Dmack pointed out a Hoverhog – a remodeled human hovercraft – he built over at HaloSkins. (HaloSkins, btw, is back online, with a new design; we’ve been meaning to post one of those web roundups, but haven’t gotten to it yet.) I haven’t tried it… but it sure looks funky! Update: gwdpto posted a bunch of pics of this puppy in action. Definitely looks pretty cool!

Shacknews is giving away a boatload of games, including 5 copies of Halo PC. For a chance to win, you just need to sign up; winners will be announced on Christmas day. Thanks to Jamirus99 for the heads-up.

Blackstar continues the PR campaign on his Summer 2004 lanfest, Are You Big Enough II, with a spiffy movie poster. Whatever else you can say about the man, he definitely has a flair for movie stuff!

Whoa… mysterious. I got word from mnemesis that Bungie had added a new wallpaper to their Halo Wallpaper collection yesterday, with no fanfare – there’s no news post on b.net about it. (Though I saw mnem’s email first, it looks like Pico posted it on our forum a bit earlier…) ‘Ancient Halo’ (last paper on the page) is a whimsical view of ancient Egyptians with Halo weapons, surrounded by heiroglyphic symbols. I did a little searching, and even after you remove the impostor glyphs (the Marathon symbol, the smiley face) I had trouble making any sense out of the rest. Maybe someone with a better handle on what they mean…? Bungie playing around… or a message to the fans? You decide.